The fact that Nick must travel alone during the four-year roundtrip doesn’t bother him at all, as he doesn’t particularly like people anyway. Once en route he learns his new boss left out some critical details in his job description—details that could cost him his life, and humankind its existence…
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The Death of the Universe
For many billions of years, humans—having conquered the curse of aging—spread throughout the entire Milky Way. They are able to live all their dreams, but to their great disappointment, no other intelligent species has ever been encountered. Now, humanity itself is on the brink of extinction because the universe is dying a protracted yet inevitable death.
They have only one hope: The ‘Rescue Project’ was designed to feed the black hole in the center of the galaxy until it becomes a quasar, delivering much-needed energy to humankind during its last breaths. But then something happens that no one ever expected—and humanity is forced to look at itself and its existence in an entirely new way.
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The Enceladus Mission (Ice Moon 1)
In the year 2031, a robot probe detects traces of biological activity on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons. This sensational discovery shows that there is indeed evidence of extraterrestrial life. Fifteen years later, a hurriedly built spacecraft sets out on the long journey to the ringed planet and its moon.
The international crew is not just facing a difficult twenty-seven months: if the spacecraft manages to make it to Enceladus without incident it must use a drillship to penetrate the kilometer-thick sheet of ice that entombs the moon. If life does indeed exist on Enceladus, it could only be at the bottom of the salty, ice covered ocean, which formed billions of years ago.
However, shortly after takeoff disaster strikes the mission, and the chances of the crew making it to Enceladus, let alone back home, look grim.
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Ice Moon – The Boxset
All four bestselling books of the Ice Moon series are now offered as a set, available only in e-book format.
The Enceladus Mission: Is there really life on Saturn's moon Enceladus? ILSE, the International Life Search Expedition, makes its way to the icy world where an underground ocean is suspected to be home to primitive life forms.
The Titan Probe: An old robotic NASA probe mysteriously awakens on the methane moon of Titan. The ILSE crew tries to solve the riddle—and discovers a dangerous secret.
The Io Encounter: Finally bound for Earth, ILSE makes it as far as Jupiter when the crew receives a startling message. The volcanic moon Io may harbor a looming threat that could wipe out Earth as we know it.
Return to Enceladus: The crew gets an offer to go back to Enceladus. Their mission—to recover the body of Dr. Marchenko, left for dead on the original expedition. Not everyone is working toward the same goal. Could it be their unwanted crew member?
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Proxima Rising
Late in the 21st century, Earth receives what looks like an urgent plea for help from planet Proxima Centauri b in the closest star system to the Sun. Astrophysicists suspect a massive solar flare is about to destroy this heretofore-unknown civilization. Earth’s space programs are unequipped to help, but an unscrupulous Russian billionaire launches a secret and highly-specialized spaceship to Proxima b, over four light-years away. The unusual crew faces a Herculean task—should they survive the journey. No one knows what to expect from this alien planet.
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The Hole
A mysterious object threatens to destroy our solar system. The survival of humankind is at risk, but nobody takes the warning of young astrophysicist Maribel Pedreira seriously. At the same time, an exiled crew of outcasts mines for rare minerals on a lone asteroid.
When other scientists finally acknowledge Pedreira’s alarming discovery, it becomes clear that these outcasts are the only ones who may be able to save our world, knowing that The Hole hurtles inexorably toward the sun.
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Silent Sun
Is our sun behaving differently from other stars? When an amateur astronomer discovers something strange on telescopic solar pictures, an explanation must be found. Is it merely artefact? Or has he found something totally unexpected?
An expert international crew is hastily assembled, a spaceship is speedily repurposed, and the foursome is sent on the ride of their lives. What challenges will they face on this spur-of-the-moment mission to our central star?
What awaits all of them is critical, not only for understanding the past, but even more so for the future of life on Earth.
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The Rift
There is a huge, bold black streak in the sky. Branches appear out of nowhere over North America, Southern Europe, and Central Africa. People who live beneath The Rift can see it. But scientists worldwide are distressed—their equipment cannot pick up any type of signal from it.
The rift appears to consist of nothing. Literally. Nothing. Nada. Niente. Most people are curious but not overly concerned. The phenomenon seems to pose no danger. It is just there.
Then something jolts the most hardened naysayers, and surpasses the worst nightmares of the world’s greatest scientists—and rocks their understanding of the universe.
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The Clouds of Venus
Where life as we know it is impossible, the real adventure begins.
Venus is a hostile planet, covered by active volcanoes. Nevertheless, NASA launches an expedition to search for life there, because the dense clouds of Earth's hot sister could offer good conditions for it. Their specially developed airship cruises in the clouds of Venus to serve as a research platform for its four astronauts.
When they discover dangerous activities on the glowing-hot surface, there can only be one explanation: A highly sophisticated life form must be at work.
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Mars – A Guided Tour
If we ever have to abandon Earth, Mars would probably be the only possible place to seek refuge. The planet offers manageable temperatures and vast water reserves. All it’s missing is oxygen in its atmosphere.
For almost 100 years, the existence of a non-human civilization on our neighboring planet was considered a safe bet. After the astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli used his telescope in 1877 to discover mysterious channels—mistranslated into English as ‘canals’—which appeared to cover the entire planet, Mars was imagined at that time to be a drought-prone world, whose inhabitants were trying to ensure their survival with gigantic, planet-wide civil engineering projects.
It was, coincidentally, also a period in which humans had undertaken huge canal projects. Mankind’s picture of Mars has changed with the times. When tensions between nations were increasing before World War I, but also between the two world wars, public opinion about Mars suddenly shifted toward the idea that it might be dangerous. Wouldn’t the Martians want to take over our fertile and bountiful land? When, on October 30, 1938, the radio network CBS aired the drama The War of the Worlds by Orson Welles, its storyline based on ‘live reporting,’ for a Halloween special, the broadcast led to a nationwide panic, despite a disclaimer aired at the beginning that the show was an adaptation of the famous book.
No civilization, maybe life
Improvements to telescopes, and eventually the first landings of probes on Mars, finally proved that there were neither canals nor civilization on Mars. Researchers, however, have not given up on their search for life on our neighboring planet. This is because the conditions might not be optimal, but they are not entirely hostile to life.
Like Earth, Mars is a rocky ball. Its diameter is approximately half that of the Earth, and the planet has a bit more than ten percent of the Earth’s mass. On the Martian surface, an astron
aut would weigh in at 62% lighter than on Earth. Its nickname ‘red planet’ was rightfully earned—Mars appears reddish not only in the sky, but also close up.
This is due to the relatively high iron oxide content, colloquially called ‘rust,’ in the surface rocks and in the dust resulting from erosion. Mars orbits the sun at a distance 1.52 times farther than the Earth. Every two years it comes especially close to our home planet, although it’s still 56 million kilometers away. At its farthest distance from the Earth, it is 401 million kilometers away from us.
Choose your launch time wisely
Therefore, if you want to launch a spaceship to Mars, you need to be smart about selecting when you go. Choosing a good launch time can reduce the amount of time you spend in interplanetary space, where you would be exposed to cosmic radiation.
Cosmic radiation, however, will still be your main problem even after you arrive on the red planet. This is because Mars lost most of its magnetic field 4 billion years ago, so it has no protection from solar wind. This contributes to the fact that the Mars atmosphere is even thinner than would be expected based on the low mass of the planet.
If you land in the temperate zones of Mars, your visible landscape would include wide, crater-scarred plains. The sky would appear yellowish-brown because the air carries a high content of dust particles in it. If you’re really unlucky, you might even land in the middle of one of Mars’s dust storms, which sometimes circle the planet for months at a time. The average atmospheric pressure corresponds to that found at an altitude of 35 kilometers above Earth.
It would be necessary for you to keep your helmet on, because the atmosphere contains almost no oxygen, only 0.13 percent. It consists of 95.3 percent carbon dioxide. Researchers at the German Aerospace Center showed in 2012 that lichen and bacteria could survive for 30 days under Mars conditions, and thus should be able to thrive and prosper. So, if you’ve brought along a potted plant, you could safely put it outside. At least during the day, when it can warm up to 35 degrees Celsius.
You’d want to bring your plant in at night, however, because it can get cold. One Mars day is 24.623 Earth hours long, with temperatures dropping to minus 85 degrees at night. This is due to the thin atmosphere, which cannot store heat very well. A heated greenhouse would be a good idea if you wanted to stay for a long time.
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter
A greenhouse would also help save you from the effects of the seasons, which on Mars are significantly more pronounced and longer than here on Earth. Mars follows a more eccentric orbit around the sun, lasting approximately 1.9 Earth years, with ‘more eccentric’ meaning that it is much farther away from the sun at some points in its orbit and much closer to the sun at other points. Especially during the parts of its orbit that bring it closer to the sun, when Mars receives up to 40 percent more energy, this can produce intense dust storms with wind speeds up to 400 kilometers per hour at the surface and 650 km/h in the upper atmosphere. Under some circumstances, these storms can envelop the entire planet and cause higher temperatures at the surface.
Noticeable vortices, or twisters, which considerably exceed similar storms on Earth, have also been observed. During the times farther away from the sun, clouds of water ice can form in the atmosphere, beneath which it can be up to 10 degrees colder. Sometimes, in the early morning hours, it can even snow, as laser measurements have shown, both summer and winter, just like on Earth.
The make-up of Mars
Like the Earth, the red planet was created from a cloud of matter around the sun. It contains a somewhat higher proportion of lighter elements that were driven by the solar wind into areas farther from the sun. Approximately four billion years ago, Mars must have been impacted in its northern hemisphere by a celestial body about the size of Pluto—an event that left behind a humungous impact crater with a diameter of almost 10,000 kilometers.
Today it is still recognizable through a strange difference between the northern and southern hemispheres. While the north consists of relatively flat lowlands, the south is dominated by mountain ranges.
Mars’s core consists of iron and nickel, with relatively high sulfur content. At a temperature of 1500 degrees, it might even still be largely molten. Above the core is a thick mantle made of rock that is barely active today. The heyday of volcanoes on Mars was about three billion years ago. Most of the lava-flow regions that are still recognizable today were created at that time. However, definite, but weak, signs of volcanism still seem to occur today. Mars’s crust is about as thick as Earth’s crust, so it is considerably thicker in terms of the relative size of the two planets.
A paradise for mountain climbers
A large part of the Martian surface is covered by dust, so any traveler to Mars had better get used to it. The red planet, however, does offer a vast array of sightseeing attractions that are worth the strenuous effort to get around. If you are impressed by the Grand Canyon in the Arizona desert, you should definitely have a look at Valles Marineris. This giant system of canyons is 4,000 kilometers long, up to 700 kilometers wide, and up to 7 kilometers deep. In the west, it merges into the fractured Noctis Labyrinthus, where the valley walls are closer together, but the canyons are still up to 5 kilometers deep.
Farther in the west is the Tharsis Rise, which rises to about 10 kilometers above the lowland and is crowned by the three extinct shield volcanoes: Ascraeus Mons—480 kilometers in diameter, 18 kilometers of elevation; Pavonis Mons—375 kilometers in diameter, 14 kilometers of elevation; and Arsia Mons—435 kilometers diameter, 16 kilometers of elevation. On the flanks of Arsia Mons, probes have discovered cavities that are probably former lava tubes. There also appear to be extensive glaciers on the slopes of this mountain.
Mars’s largest volcano in terms of surface area is named Alba Patera. It is only 6 kilometers high, but its surface area has a diameter of 1200 kilometers. That is also a Solar System record, just like the elevation of Olympus Mons, which rises 26 kilometers above its surroundings. However, Olympus Mons rises only 21 kilometers above ‘middle ground,’—the equivalent of sea level, which is the zero point we use on Earth—so it might need to give up its gold medal to the 22 kilometers tall Rheasilvia Mons on the asteroid Vesta. The summit of Olympus Mons extends above the atmosphere of Mars and into space and thus would be the perfect location for a telescope. It’s not completely clear, however, whether the volcano is still active or not. It appears to have last erupted two million years ago.
But let’s return to Valles Marineris. At its ends are broad valleys that were shaped in the past, researchers believe, by rivers. Where these valleys open into craters, deposits that are reminiscent of typical river deltas can be detected in some areas. Maybe, at some time in Mars’s past, underground ice supplies were melted by global volcanism, and huge amounts of water had to be drained away. That these deposits are actually sediment, however, has not yet been verified. The youngest of these valleys were formed just a few million years ago. The most significant example, Ma’adim Vallis, is up to 700 kilometers long, 20 kilometers wide, and 2 kilometers deep.
Dark streaks can be seen on many of the crater walls, and they change with the seasons. Their chemical makeup is presently undetermined. Perhaps landslides in these areas are exposing the dark rocky layers underneath. The erosion gullies that are also frequently found on steep slopes in the southern hemisphere appear to have a connection to liquid or melting water, especially because they seem to form only at certain latitudes. However, they could also originate from carbon dioxide ice or movements of dust.
Visually, the sand dunes that you can see near the north pole are particularly impressive. They also change with the seasons. In the winter they are covered with a centimeter-thick layer of carbon dioxide ice. When spring starts, the ice breaks down little by little, so that the dark sand underneath becomes visible. With increasing warming, lower-lying CO2 also evaporates and carries the sand with it, depositing it on the tops of the dunes. From there, the sand moves downward whe
n the winds blow.
Water on Mars
Most of the Martian surface today looks like a dry desert. But if you take a closer look, closer than using only your own eyes, you’ll find that water might be closer than you would think. NASA’s Curiosity rover, for example, found some minerals with a water content of up to four percent. At the middle latitudes, there might be water ice below the surface that was transported there by glaciers during Mars’s ice ages.
Other vast water reserves have been detected under the ice caps at the north and south poles. These caps, which are up to 5 kilometers thick at the North Pole and 1.5 kilometers thick at the South Pole, are mostly made up of carbon dioxide (what we call dry ice), but they also have a water ice component. Radar measurements by the Mars Express probe show that there must be large areas of ice that are under the surface around the south pole and reach down to a depth of 3.7 kilometers and correspond to approximately two-thirds the volume of the Greenland ice sheet. Melted, they could cover all of Mars with an ocean 11 meters deep.
However, currently it would be counterproductive to set up a giant melting furnace at the South Pole. Due to the low atmospheric pressure, liquid water cannot exist on the Martian surface for any length of time—it simply evaporates too quickly. As mountain climbers know, the boiling point of water decreases with lessening air pressure—unfortunately, when it comes to Mars.
Mars Nation: The Complete Trilogy Page 84
